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Bishop Evans Tyree

The 1903 issue of Meharry News (see the Meharry Library Archives page) features a short article about Bishop Evans Tyree giving a short talk “full of practical suggestions and and humor.” Recognizing the name, I looked through some of the previous posts here on this blog. I found mention of him so far in two places here and here.

Bishop Evans Tyree was born in De Kalb County, Tennessee on August 19, 1854 to slaves Harry & Winnie Tyree. [1, 2] He progressed rapidly in the African Methodist Episcopal church, becoming an elder by the age of 22. The wonderful Documenting the American South collection of the University of North Carolina, has a picture of him from a book by Horace Talbert titled The Sons of Allen: Together with a Sketch of the Rise and Progress of Wilberforce University, Wilberforce, Ohio.

So far, in about 30 minutes of searching, I have learned that he was married to a woman named Ellen and they had at least the following children – Evans Tyree Jr., Carrie B. Tyree, Anna Alberta, and Herman F. I know they had at least one other daughter from Anna’s obit whose first name is not mentioned, but she married a Eugene Allen. It appears that Evan Sr. died here in Davidson County November 12, 1920 [3] It is getting late tonight, so I’m not going to go into the census records quite yet, but let’s just say I have added the Tyree family to my persons of interest now in Black Nashville history 🙂

One last departing image from the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America digitized newspaper collection. This sketch of Bishop Evans is from the July 28, 1900 issue of The Colored American, a newspaper of Washington D.C. It is amazing that they are digitizing their old newspapers like this!